There had already been a few incidents, Luoth had read in the news, fortunately nothing serious, just the nonsense of impatient adventurers, tourists unfamiliar with the peculiarities of Nelatte.

  Carnival was two days away, and the latest preparations had added a note of paroxysm to the city's already fervent activity at this time of year. Maddening, he sighed as he ducked once more to avoid a head-on collision with a stranger walking in confusion. Luoth liked the festive atmosphere, but so many confused people crowded the streets!

  Caravans of merchants, students, and even simple curious travelers arrived from both sides of the Rift, so numerous and crowded that the shuttle buses that picked people up at waiting points to bring them into Nelatte went back and forth without a break. It took an army of people to keep things safe, with traffic cops and firefighters on standby, monitoring the situation from above the floating cabins.

  Or so they said on the radio.

  Luoth lifted a questioning eye to the sky, searching for the familiar torpedo shapes of airships. He saw a few of them. But if the guardians of order were up there, what on earth could they do, quickly, in an emergency? Photographs for souvenirs?

  That was plain stupid, he concluded, shaking his head and continuing on his way. Who knew what those reporters had guessed, as usual?

  Perdinciravola! Even Seluma was on the street, out of her shell!

  She froze at the sight of him, stiffening. Caught in the act!

  “I had to go in person to check the quality of the goods from a new supplier,” she announced before even saying goodbye.

  Luoth walked up to her with open arms.

  “How nice to see you! I was on my way to the Terrace. Come on, let's have a juice, a chat at a little table, like we used to!”

  He must have really caught her red-handed, or with the stems in her mouth, or who knows what, because Seluma was unable to say anything back. She followed him up the stairs in silence.

  “If I don't get spit on,” she only commented when they took their seats. “You don't know how many people are jealous of my business, as if I had stolen it through trickery and manipulation and not earned it by offering good food at good prices!”

  Luoth sighed as he squinted against the sun. Ah, to have one of those wish-fulfilling pebbles in his pocket and to be able to ask Seluma not to talk about her work or her restaurant for a few minutes. Instead, he had nothing, and the only way was to try to distract her from her fixed ideas with brilliant conversation.

  “What a beautiful day,” came out of him, to his extreme dismay.

  “What's all this nonsense about Zerafia emissaries?” she asked.

  Whatever, better than continuing to talk about money and business. Strange for a banker to be bored with such matters.

  “I really don't think it's nonsense, Seluma. The announcement is official. They're coming tomorrow, the eve of the party...”

  “But how will they move?” she insisted. He fell silent as the waiter came to bring their juices.

  Luoth took a sip immediately. Seluma stayed to watch the boy trot off.

  Someone in the bar was cackling, others were laughing. The slightly too loud clinking of glasses on the bar did not bode well.

  “I can't believe no one's gone down to see what happened in that stupid mine yet,” she muttered.

  “But yes, they went there! I mean, they are going there,” Luoth replied. He was sure that there had been a time when he and Seluma had talked about frivolous things, joked and laughed. Such moments were always too short and quickly forgotten, he concluded bitterly.

  “They will go, next year,” Seluma repeated, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “If no one invites them to dinner and they don't have to take their wives to the surface to swim in the river.”

  “You're wrong, they arranged the expedition quickly. They are there. Almost. Maybe.”

  She stared at him the way one looks at an obstacle in the middle of the road.

  “It's a long way!” protested Luoth. “It's not like engineers are wagons; they can't travel vertically up and down the wall. They have to stop and camp for the night, and so on. It takes two, maybe three days to get down there, barring unforeseen circumstances. The road is rough and dangerous, and they certainly couldn't carry a long-range communications unit on their backs. If they can't fix the one they had in the mine, we won't hear from them until they get back close enough to contact us with their portable radios.”

  For a moment, a shadow of weariness or disturbance passed over Seluma's expression and posture. Luoth saw her thinning, losing color, as if the bluish sap that flowed through her veins instead of blood had receded further inward, leaving her pale and helpless.

  Her husbands were about to reappear? The tension of those days was now taking its toll? Could he help her in any way?

  But it was only a moment. Arching her eye-antennas, Seluma returned to the attack.

  “They cannot move,” she said. “They cannot leave their city.”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  Yes, they were even more stationary and stubborn than a giant snail. He laughed to himself.

  “They seem to have brought a piece of it with them. Look, I'm glad they're coming. I don't think they're scheming like you say. And even if they have an interest in the mine, just because they've caused us some trouble in the past doesn't mean they're really our enemies. But now you're trying to convince me that the Zerafians are coming with a very evil plan in mind...”

  Seluma sipped the juice slowly, her mouth turning into a kind of funnel that protruded from the bottom of her face.

  “They don't impress me, that's all. I don't think they're honest. I play the grumbler because someone has to remember what the Zerafians did. I wish for reconciliation and peace like everyone else, but this hope should not make us blind and careless.”

  “You want to trust but remain suspicious. A paradox,” Luoth concluded.

  “Cautious, not suspicious. What should always be done with everyone, and especially with those who have already given us reason to doubt. Don't you remember the contaminated dust? A neighborhood almost exploded!”

  Luoth raised his hands to defend himself against his friend's vehemence.

  “Seluma, they were proven to be larvae... perhaps the young of the bejeweled snakes...”

  “And who put them there? They certainly weren't in the mine. Someone tampered with the load of dust that was left outside unattended.”

  The smile he was trying to flatter her with tired his cheeks in vain.

  “Maybe the bejeweled snakes crawled in there to lay their eggs!”

  “Which has never happened before in history, and has never happened since we organized a minimum of surveillance!”

  “Of course not, they are timid beasts.”

  Seluma silenced him with a loud snort of contempt.

  “Snakes are a guess. I bet the technician I saw the other day said that —go figure, a Samavorian!”

  The juice was too strong and burned his tongue. Had they put alcohol in it?

  “A Samavorian?” he repeated thoughtfully. “Strange. There aren't many of them in Nelatte.”

  “There are more than you think,” she said sourly. “More than we'd like. At least they have the decency to be less conspicuous.”

  Luoth put down his glass, making too much noise. He looked at the waiter with a thread of anxiety, but the waiter was busy elsewhere, not watching him. It would have been better not to go back to the Terrace for a while, or at least to go alone, without other drinkers shouting and attracting stares. He was ruining his reputation.

  Of course, a place where they had not accepted Seluma was a place where even he would not like to set foot again.

  “But what did the Samavorians do to you?” he asked as calmly as he could.

  “Nothing. But should I consider people who spontaneously combust trustworthy?”

  “That's just the way they are!”

  He distinctly saw a flash of anger make the Lumacid's telescopic eyes glow.

  “Do that! Is that the excuse for everything? Can your nature justify anything?”

  Luoth searched for the right words in the air around him, in the beautiful sunny day, in the grace of the two young ladies tasting frosted pastries at the small table next to him.

  “At this rate, you'll be blaming the fish for the exhibitionism of breathing water,” he scolded her, still calm.

  Was she really that prejudiced, Seluma? It was typical of her to show sarcasm and criticize everyone, but Luoth had always understood her comments as an outlet, a defense, a way to detach herself and not have to take it too hard. He didn't think she meant it, that she really held a grudge against strangers just because of the color of their blood or the way they reproduced.

  And what about herself? She suffered the consequences of that racism every day. She did not even have the comfort of a community to take refuge in, to feel a part of.

  “The fish don't get smart under my nose; they don't look down on me because I'm not like them. Respect must be mutual.”

  There. It was all about revenge.

  “They say the Samavorians are descended from the Ifrit,” he observed. “And that they need fire as we need water.”

  Even that did not convince the Lumacid.

  “Half-divine beings and the like should stay elsewhere,” she said darkly. “Gods who walk among mortals create havoc and trouble for decent people. But why do you defend them? Do you know any?”

  Luoth took his time to empty his glass. There were things he could not tell, even to her.

  “No.”

  The two women at the other table laughed between them, a silvery sound that flew away into the endless, clear sky. Never had the day seemed farther from portents of doom. And yet...

  “I never said they wanted to wage war against us,” Seluma continued, returning to the Zerafian debate. “But that crazy prank with the trolley to create panic —they must know that it didn't work. That these means will never work, Nelatte is not populated by little children who get scared. And if they now think of coming here in person to try out who knows what malicious trick...”

  “Oh, for the sake of Water, but what do you expect?” he blurted out. “That they will blow themselves up in the crowd?”

  Seluma's beady eyes wavered at the top of his antennae while her mouth twisted into a stubborn, contemptuous grimace.

  Oh no!

  Luoth bit his lower lip, abandoning any vague pretense of joking. His stomach had turned the juice into a sour mass, and the loud cheering he heard from all sides seemed as false and brittle as a painted backdrop.

  There might have been something reasonable in Seluma's fears.

  The Zerafians were far more symbiotic with the Rift than the inhabitants of Nelatte had ever been. They lived deep inside, where direct sunlight never reached, their city growing like a mold stain on the wall, and they themselves were direct emanations of it, devoid of independent life, filaments projected from a single pulsing center.

  If anyone knew, it was them.

  And now they came, leaving Zerafia for the first time. Coincidence?

  The question the mayor had asked him the day before came back to haunt him with a new, disturbing implication.

  How would these creatures react to news of the end of the world?